On Jan 29, 2009, at 2:55 PM, Thomas Tempelmann wrote:
Using the system frameworks for reading/writing system standard file
formats is a MUST in my opinion. It makes your app "future proof"
to a
degree.
Well, it makes relying on an "hidden"engine and it does not please
to me.
What?!!
You'd be using the same functions that Apple recommends using, and
you'd be using the same in XCode (or their NS... counterparts). What
do you see wrong with that?
I believe, though sitting here thinking about it I cannot recall WHY I
believe this so it might be wrong, that a binary plist file is really
just a serialized CF data object. In our case a CFDictionary or a
CFArray or something. The system has methods for reading and writing
these and the actual format that it creates binarywise is not
documented by apple so that they have freedom to change it as
necessary as the system evolves. As long as the calls to read and
write remain compatible with old versions they maintain compatibility
with older software regardless. This is much faster to load and parse
and uses less disk space than converting back and forth to XML would
each time. So you really shouldn't try to parse these out yourself,
but use the methods as already outlined in this thread to reconstitute
the CF data structures from the disk data.
Thanks,
James
James Sentman http://sentman.com
http://MacHomeAutomation.com
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